Driver held in Paris slayings of Kurds

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PARIS — A man who had served as an occasional driver for a prominent Kurdish separatist was charged Monday with killing her and two other Kurdish activists in a Paris office almost two weeks ago.

The Paris prosecutor’s office gave the driver’s name as Omer Guney, 30, and said he had been born in Turkey. It said that he was under investigation over whether he had carried out the killings as part of a terrorist group.

The prosecutor’s office said he was sometimes a ‘‘guide and driver’’ for the slain Kurdish separatist, Sakine Cansiz, who was a founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, in 1978. He was detained for questioning last week.

The three victims — Cansiz, Fidan Dogan, and Leyla Soylemez — were all fatally shot, apparently with silenced pistols, at the unmarked Kurdish Information Center in central Paris. Their bodies were found early on Jan. 10.

The main target was assumed to be Cansiz, who had been living in Paris since 2007 and had been under surveillance by the French police.

Security experts said she raised funds for the group in Europe.

Turkish officials have suggested that the three women were killed as part of internal Kurdish feuding over recent talks with Turkish authorities to end the group’s three decades of armed resistance.